Recent election violence in Pakistan has been called unprecedented. But Pakistan's 2008 elections were bloodier. The electoral death toll in this election has crossed 100, but in 2008, over 150 were killed and 400 injured. 

If Pakistan's experience is like that of other countries around the world, then Saturday, Election Day, will be violent. But when perpetrated by political actors -- candidates, parties, party workers, and supporters -- that violence can be taken as a sign that electoral administration is getting stronger and that democracy is maturing. 

While the Pakistani and international press have expressed alarm at the vehemence of electoral violence perpetrated by the Pakistani Taliban and other extremist groups, Islamist parties have never won more than about five percent of the vote in any of Pakistan's elections. This election will be no different.

The apparent increase in the extremists' use of violence in this historic election is a sign, not of their strength, but of their increasing irrelevance in a society that is moving forward with regular, competitive elections between mainstream parties. 

As William McCants has argued in reference to the rise in militant violence in the Middle East, when moderate Islamists and other opposition parties begin to compete successfully in increasingly democratic elections, attacks by extremists who could not take power through political participation escalate. It is thus more important than ever for voters and parties to participate peacefully and for citizens, international observers, and other electoral stakeholders to resist the temptation to conclude that election violence implies that Pakistan, or any country, for that matter, is not suited or ready for democracy.    

Data on violent incidents collected during Pakistan's 2008 elections show that the dynamics here are consistent with those in many other parts of the world. Electoral violence is correlated strongly with two things: uncertainty and reform. The more uncertainty there is in an election -- whether because of the entrance of new candidates or shifting strength of parties -- the higher the risk of violence. And the more reform -- electoral reforms or strengthening institutions that conduct oversight -- the greater the incentives for competitors to add violence to their tactics as their support bases become less reliable and fraud gets more difficult.  

Many transitions to democracy since 1945 have been accompanied by an increase in political violence. This phenomenon, however, is not unique to Africa, Pakistan, or even new democracies. French political scientist Patrick Quantin, for example, compares African election violence with tumultuous elections in 19th-century France in order to illustrate how messy the consolidation of democracy can be.

Similarly, Rapoport and Weinberg document episodes of election violence that erupted during phases of electoral reform and political liberalization in ancient Greece, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Case study evidence suggests that at least 198 countries or territories and more than 22 U.S. states have experienced at least one episode of election violence at some point in their electoral histories. As a 2001 U.S. Agency for International Development report notes, "some violence is likely in nearly all elections. 

Contested, competitive elections have been associated with violence or the threat of violence in polities as diverse as the United States (Colfax County, Louisiana, 1873; Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898; Florida, 1920; U.S. Presidential elections in 1860 and 1876), Costa Rica (1945), Algeria (1991/92), Colombia (1875), and Côte d'Ivoire (2011), to name a few. All occurred not during founding elections, but later in the process, as electoral administration improved, multiple parties were allowed to compete on a more even playing field, new electoral coalitions formed, voter sophistication and participation increased, and other factors made incumbents less certain of winning.             

These patterns at first seem counterintuitive, but are plainly logical. Violence is on the menu of options that parties and candidates have to win elections. But there is a natural disincentive to deploy violence. It is easy to detect, makes the perpetrators look bad, and can result in sanctions. So what are the preferred alternatives? Fraud, intimidation, negative campaigning, slander, fear creation -- the quieter the means of coercion, the better.            

But reforms disrupt the usual pathways and make fraud more difficult. So throughout history and across countries, reform tends to be correlated with violence.       

Take, for example, Kentucky. Prior to the introduction of the secret ballot in Louisville in 1888, the Democratic political machine would pay clerks to mark blank ballots and buy votes from white and African-American voters alike.

In his research on the effects of electoral reform on political violence, historian Tracy Campbell finds that ballot secrecy undercut these strategies and forced the machine to resort to more flagrant means to manipulate the outcome-threatening jobs, using police to suppress turnout in the African American neighborhoods that tended to vote Republican, and moving polling stations after long lines formed. Seventeen years later, when the new Fusionist party, which had multi-ethnic support, entered the scene and threatened its dominance, the machine intensified its use of police violence and intimidation. Those attending Fusionist rallies were "whacked with sticks," Fusionist candidates and voters were thrown out of polling stations, ballot boxes were taken at gunpoint by armed thugs, and those seeking to document the tactics with cameras were driven "off the streets."

When the Democrats won, the Fusionists challenged the results with the evidence they had amassed, and Kentucky's high court ruled in 1907 that extensive fraud and violence had disenfranchised 6,296 voters and overturned the result because it had been "designed in fraud, backed up by vilification and abuse." While Kentucky and other states would still witness both fraud and intimidation, the decision was the first of its kind and would not have been possible had the rise in violence not drawn attention to the problem and bolstered the voices of those calling for reform.              

But this example is only one among many, indicating that electoral violence is intrinsic to the process of democratization.

Violence is a symptom and a sign of a strengthened electoral system.  At the same time, it creates the outrage necessary for further reform. Violence and reform feed into each other cyclically.  

Increased instances of violence in modern elections is not a sign that these countries cannot cope with democratization. Instead, it is because international norms and pressure have condensed the process of democratization for contemporary nascent democracies -- versus in the 1800s when the process could be more incremental -- that we see more electoral violence across the world today.  

Thanks to a growing body of research on election violence in a variety of contexts, including data from Pakistan's 2008 elections, the dynamics of violence driven by parties, candidates, and their supporters are well understood. What remains for Pakistan to figure out is what the intensification of militant violence directed at the political process means for the future.

For candidates, violence is a means of winning within the democratic system. For militants, electoral violence is a strategy meant to re-engineer that system or seek its very demise because it is a form of government in which they cannot compete and win based on the merits of their policy ideas and vision for society.

Megan Reif is an assistant professor of political science and international studies at the University of Colorado, Denver. Her work on election violence is based on case study analysis and data collected in Pakistan during the 2008 elections, as well as data from Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and the United States (Newark, NJ) during the same period. Nadia Naviwala is Country Representative in Pakistan for the United States Institute of Peace.

The authors are grateful to Mathieu Mérino and the election violence prevention training team at the European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES) for drawing their attention to the work done on this subject by Quantin. 

With just hours left before voters begin casting their votes for Pakistan's next leaders, political posters are plastered across markets, convoys of motorcycles and cars flying party flags clog major thoroughfares, and raspy-voiced candidates make their final appeals to throngs of people.

Election fever runs high everywhere, it seems, but in Rabwah.

The city nestled alongside the Chenab River in Punjab is home to an estimated 40,000 potential voters, but the vast majority of them will not be voting in the upcoming election due to their faith. Rabwah is a haven for Ahmedis, who make up over 95 percent of its population. While Ahmedis consider themselves Muslims, the Pakistani government has officially declared them otherwise.

The groups' adherence to Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, a man they see as a prophet, is heretical to most Muslims, who hold that the Prophet Muhammad was the last messenger of God. This difference of beliefs has made Ahmedis the subject of scorn in Pakistan, where they could be subject to death for practicing their faith since doing so would mean engaging in the illegal act of "posing as a Muslim."

While they aren't officially barred from voting, Ahmedis must sign a statement renouncing their faith in order to cast a ballot.

"I'm 37 years old and I've never voted in my life," says Amir Mehmood, a lifelong resident of Rabwah.

Mehmood says that he follows politics closely, but having to deny his beliefs to vote is more of a sacrifice than he is willing to bear.

"If the state thinks that I'm not a Muslim, that's fine. I can't change the state. But how can I say that I'm a non-Muslim just because the state tells me to? I consider myself to be a Muslim."

A 1974 amendment to the Pakistani Constitution explicitly declared Ahmedis to be non-Muslims, and a few years later separate faith-based electorates were created that forced Ahmedis to vote as non-Muslims. Instead of doing so, most Ahmedis refused to cast a ballot-and have maintained their non-participation in the country's politics ever since.

While President Pervez Musharraf unified the electorate in 2002, he soon bowed to religious extremists by inserting one glaring exception to the rule: Ahmedis would have a distinct voter list. All those who tick the box "Muslim" in the religious affiliation column of their election ballot must sign a statement certifying that they are not Ahmedi.

Due to this requirement, the upcoming election will be the eighth one in which Ahmedis refuse to take part. But Saleemuddin, a spokesperson for the Ahmedi community who uses only his first name, says this does not amount to a boycott.

"We don't approve of the word ‘boycott.' We're not boycotting. We've been so clearly discriminated against that we've been essentially prevented from casting votes in these elections." 

Saleemuddin says by phone from Rabwah, "Like anywhere in the world, voting rights should be based on citizenship. In fact, they are in Pakistan too, but one executive order has brought in religion and kept my community from voting."

He says every government has continued to propagate a second-class status for Ahmedis because of the power that religious extremists and powerful clerics exercise over the country's political arena. While this election will mark the first time one democratically-elected government will pass the mantle to another, for Saleemuddin, this milestone is undermined by the state's unwillingness to let Ahmedis vote in a free and fair manner. 

And few candidates are willing to address the issue of religious freedom.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, an independent political analyst told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, "The elections will hardly bring any respite to religious minorities because the societal groups and parties that target them do not get their votes."

According to Rizvi, politicians don't have much to gain from courting the votes of religious groups like Ahmedis, Christians, or Hindus. "These votes which are small and scattered cannot generate enough political clout to pressure political parties effectively."

This amounts to a sort of catch-22 for Ahmedis since politicians do not feel politically bound to respond to their plight, something they cannot address without allies in the government. Saleemuddin says he had some hope that the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan might herald in a new era of religious freedom but Khan overtly declared his accord for the status quo saying in a video statement, "I have read the Qur'an very closely and I know that those who do not recognize Muhammad as the last prophet are not Muslims."

"Imran Khan has claimed that he's going to create a ‘New Pakistan,' but before he's even had the chance to do so, he's declared that Ahmedis will be stuck in the same ‘Old Pakistan' that we've known for too long," Saleemuddin laments.

Many Ahmedis feel that Khan's statements shamed his party's name-Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf or the "Justice Party" -but Bilal Haider, an Ahmedi living in Karachi, says Khan is no different than other politicians.

"All of these parties have written into their agendas that they want equal rights but none of them actually [do away with discriminatory laws] once they get into power," he says.

While there are an estimated four million Ahmedis in the country, most politicians think appealing for their vote will do more harm than good since bias against the sect is widespread-and it isn't limited to election season or political rights, says Haider.

"Each and every Ahmedi family is now connected to someone who was martyred. It's not only about silent discrimination, it's about literal attacks."

One of Haider's uncles, along with his wife's father, was killed in May 2010 in synchronized attacks on two Ahmedi mosques in Lahore, which resulted in the deaths of over 80 worshippers.

Haider is hopeful that when he has children, they'll be born into a more tolerant Pakistan.

But for Saleemuddin, the current situation is vexing enough. "My daughter watches TV and sees all of the political advertisements and news of the election," he says. "She asks me which candidate our family supports. She's only in 6th grade and it's really hard to explain to her why we're not voting. ‘Our town is so big,' she says, ‘So how come there isn't a single political poster or party banner here?'"

He says it's difficult to tell her that no politician is willing to change the laws so that his community in Rabwah can cast ballots without having to cast aside their faith.

Beenish Ahmed is a freelance multimedia journalist based in Islamabad, Pakistan. She is reporting on education there through a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crises Reporting. 

There seems to be some disagreement between Pakistan's extremists over participation in the May 11 elections. Pakistani Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan recently told Pakistanis to boycott the elections because democracy is un-Islamic, while Maulana Sami ul-Haq, a conservative cleric who runs a religious seminary that trained many Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, said in a follow-up statement that voting is a religious obligation.   

Could it be that the Taliban's brutal attacks on politicians belonging to the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) coalition have actually been detrimental to the wider extremist movement in Pakistan? The attacks definitely handicap religious parties, who often share sympathies and ideologies with the Taliban, at a time when they could potentially capitalize on staunch public disappointment with the outgoing government's performance.

While religious parties lost big in the 2008 elections, they probably anticipated some role for themselves in the next government, which is likely to be led by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, a conservative political party known for its own "special relationship" with extremists. Religious parties were further bolstered by a survey conducted by the British Council earlier this year revealing that 38 percent of Pakistani youth surveyed believed Islamic law is better suited for Pakistan than democracy.

Instead, Taliban attacks have likely increased chances of a high sympathy vote for the secular parties, a dynamic that helped usher in the PPP coalition in 2008 following the tragic death of Benazir Bhutto.

Why is it, though, that the extremists are not speaking with one voice? The commonsense - and most likely - argument is that they are just plain unorganized. Even though many of Haq's students joined the Taliban movement, it's doubtful that he has direct influence over the Taliban command and control structure - hence the very public statements contradicting the official Taliban position.

Let's not forget that Haq is a politician who leads his own political party and previously served in the Senate. His statements are more a warning for his former students than anyone else to not ruin his chances or those of the others who have been sitting on the sidelines for several years. A return to politics means a chance to advance the ideological agenda of the religious right, but it also allows individuals like Haq and his friends to benefit from state resources, foreign aid flows, and other "perks" of being in power.   

No one expects the religious right to take over...yet. Religious parties never have much success in Pakistani elections. Furthermore, the likelihood of a General Zia ul-Haq figure emerging on the scene is low. Zia, the military dictator who introduced a conservative interpretation of shariah law in several areas of Pakistani culture and law, began the trend of mixing religion with politics as a tool of state power. The approach engendered a vast network of militants that fought mostly Pakistan's battles while invoking the name of Islam; some were also used by the United States in pushing the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, while others advanced their own sectarian agendas. 

While no one can compete with Zia's quasi-theocratic feat at the moment, religion and politics still mix - and badly. Pakistan's long relationship with militants and its cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001 have engendered a new breed of religious right - those against the state, namely the Pakistani Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

It is because of this shift in the state's relationship with militants that the Pakistani military has a clear interest in strengthening the religious right's political chances. Could the likes of Sami ul-Haq and other religious political parties convince the Pakistani Taliban to stop attacking the Pakistani military, secular politicians, and ordinary citizens? Don't bet money on it, but in February the Taliban did say they would participate in talks with the military if they would be mediated by one of the following individuals: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz President Nawaz Sharif, Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Munawar Hasan, or Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

The talks did not happen. Instead, the Pakistani military began an operation in the Tirah Valley where numerous security officials and militants have died. It is becoming harder and harder for the Pakistani military to respond to battlefield challenges by militants who now want access to the ballot box too. In addition to militant leader Hafeez Saeed's new "political career," dozens of individuals with alleged links to militant organizations have filed papers for the elections.

The entrée of such unsavory characters into Pakistani politics would not be a first, but it would be the wrong direction for a country that is still testing a rapidly evolving democratic culture and also trying to clarify the role of religion in politics. Islam, after all, is inextricable from Pakistan's history. The country was formed in 1947 as part of a political push by Muhammad Ali Jinnah to establish a homeland for the Indian subcontinent's impoverished Muslims. General Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, reiterated this point last week when he told the country's premier military academy that "Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Islam can never be taken out of Pakistan."

Many believed Kayani's remarks justified religious extremism. This can hardly be the whole truth given the losses the military has suffered fighting the Pakistani Taliban. But the skepticism provoked by his remarks illustrates just how damaged religion and politics has become in Pakistan.

If extremists can take advantage of this characterization of Pakistan to advance their violent agendas, then surely the country's secular parties and government institutions can strengthen themselves against the militant threat in the name of Islam as well. But with extremists such as the members of the banned sectarian group, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, fielding candidates in this week's elections, such progress does not appear imminent.

Shamila N. Chaudhary is a South Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council from 2010-2011.

It's been a rough month for Pervez Musharraf.

Since returning to Pakistan on March 24 after several years of self-imposed exile, the former president has been disqualified from participating in the May 11 national election; arrested on multiple charges; and targeted by a car bomb that failed to detonate. His travails have garnered little sympathy from the masses. They've either ignored him (his homecoming rally attracted less than 2,000 people), or lashed out at him (a lawyer hurled a shoe at him during a court appearance).

Musharraf's life is in limbo. His political career is on hold (and, following a court decision on April 30 to ban him from elections for life, perhaps over altogether). He also can't leave his Islamabad estate (where, as of this writing, he is under house arrest) except for his visits to court-trips fraught with peril for one of Pakistan's most marked men.

Musharraf has long been aware of the legal problems and security threats he would face if he returned to Pakistan. So why would he give up the relative freedom and safety of Dubai and London to come home?

Some observers point to the deep influence of delusional advisors. Others say he wants to demonstrate his patriotism and loyalty to a nation he ingloriously abandoned. And still others suggest he simply isn't very smart.

Yet the best explanation is his outsize ego.

I won't soon forget the day back in July 2011, just weeks after U.S. Navy Seals apprehended Osama Bin Laden, when Musharraf gave a talk to a beyond-capacity crowd at the Wilson Center. He declared that he had few regrets about his time in power, and insisted that if he were to take power again, "I would not need to reinvent the wheel"-because what he had done while president had been successful.

This breathtaking assertion came from a man who launched media crackdowns, fired the chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, declared a state of emergency, and eventually resigned after becoming the target of a lawyers-led anti-government movement described by some as Pakistan's Arab Spring. So controversial (and unpopular) were these actions that, for many Pakistanis, they overshadow the positive accomplishments that Musharraf made earlier in his rule-including economic growth and media liberalization.

With Pakistan now a fragile, civilian-led democracy, the former military strongman's hubris has apparently convinced him that he can reinvent himself as a very different kind of leader.

It's a persona I've seen him assume firsthand. After his talk at the Wilson Center, as security officers attempted to lead him out of the building, Musharraf mingled with the crowd. He shook hands, slapped backs, and laughed heartily as onlookers chanted "March 23, 2012! March 23, 2012!"-the date on which he was then promising (falsely, as it turned out) to return to Pakistan. It was a command performance for the former leader of an institution known for its contemptuous references to "bloody civilians."

In more recent weeks, Musharraf has gone to extraordinary lengths to come off as a man of the people. He live-tweeted his return to Pakistan, and photos posted on his various social media accounts show him lifting weights and playing with his German shepherd.

Yet even as Musharraf's new image distances him from the military, he continues to embrace that institution's ideologies-including the idea that he can rescue Pakistan from itself. In his very first remarks after returning home, Musharraf proclaimed he had come back to "save" Pakistan.  When deployed as an army institutional narrative, this messiah mentality has been used to justify military rule. Yet when appropriated by individuals, it becomes a highly narcissistic claim to legitimacy (it's a tactic also employed by Imran Khan, who has vowed "to launch a jihad to save Pakistan").

Musharraf's bombast may seem ridiculous given his dim political prospects (the latter can be explained, in part, by his unpopular, dictatorial end-of-rule policies; his decision to establish a post-9/11 partnership with Washington, which makes many Pakistanis regard him as a "poodle" of the United States; and his weak and unorganized new political party, the All Pakistan Muslim League). Musharraf's bombast has also prompted some to claim that his decision to return betrays a lack of strategic thinking (the same deficiency seen in his decision nearly 15 years ago to launch an ill-fated military incursion into the Kargil district of Kashmir).

Yet in fact, Musharraf's return was well-thought-out-and, in the narrow context of electoral politics, perfectly rational and even quite reasonable.

His plan was to contest a parliamentary seat in Chitral, a district in the mountainous northern reaches of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province-one of the few pockets of the country where Musharraf enjoys considerable levels of popularity. (Few public opinion surveys have focused on Musharraf in recent years, but a poll released just the other day finds that about two-thirds of Pakistanis support his electoral disqualification.) Early in April, after his nomination papers were accepted in Chitral (he would be disqualified just days later), locals responded with a celebratory procession, and a local journalist reported that people were "ecstatic." Political analysts critical of Musharraf grudgingly acknowledged that other potential national assembly candidates from Chitral were, in deference to Musharraf, opting for provincial seats instead.

Musharraf's popularity in Chitral can be traced to his administration's construction of the Lowari Tunnel-a five-mile-long structure that protects locals from avalanches that buried thousands of people in past years. In the winter months, the tunnel enables isolated, snow-bound Chitralis to travel to other parts of Pakistan without having to depend on a dangerous and more circuitous route through Afghanistan. "I don't care what Musharraf did with anyone else," proclaimed one Chitrali last year, "but if I as Chitrali neglected his services for Chitral, I will never be forgiven in any court in this world."

One candidate running for the Chitral seat has claimed that he, not Musharraf, deserves credit for the tunnel. Yet other politicians-including a chief official with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the party led by Musharraf nemesis Nawaz Sharif that many expect to lead this year's polls-have rushed to Musharraf's defense, crediting him with constructing more than two-thirds of the tunnel during his rule.

In sum, Musharraf chose the only remotely realistic route back to politics-a parliamentary seat in a district where he commands modest levels of support. His vanity enabled him to push forward with this plan while blinding him to the legal problems that have long threatened to snuff out any hopes of a political comeback.

Michael Kugelman is the senior program associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He can be reached at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org or on Twitter @michaelkugelman.

Today, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) issued its 2013 Annual Report, focusing on Pakistan and 28 other countries around the world, including Afghanistan.  As an independent U.S. government advisory body separate from the State Department, USCIRF's Annual Report identifies violations of religious freedom, as defined by international conventions, and provides policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress. 

Based on our monitoring over the past year, we have concluded that the situation in Pakistan is one of the worst in the world. 

The report found that "sectarian and religiously-motivated violence is chronic, especially against Shi'a Muslims, and the government has failed to protect members of religious minority communities, as well as the majority faith."  An array of repressive laws, including the much abused blasphemy law and religiously discriminatory anti-Ahmadi laws, foster an atmosphere of violent extremism and vigilantism.  The growth of militant groups espousing a violent religious ideology that undertake attacks impact all Pakistanis and threatens the country's security and stability. 

In the face of increasing attacks against Shi'as and consistent violence against other minorities, Pakistani authorities have failed to provide protection and have not consistently brought perpetrators to justice or taken action against societal actors who incite violence. 

In light of these particularly severe violations, USCIRF recommends that Pakistan be designated a "country of particular concern," or CPC, by the U.S. Department of State for these systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.  The CPC designation is a special blacklist created when Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed in 1998 the International Religious Freedom Act. Unlike some other ‘blacklists,' the CPC designation does not carry any specific penalties for the countries on the list. What it does do is assign a framework through which U.S. officials can encourage the designated country's government to address the egregious violations of religious freedom.  This can come in the form of a binding roadmap of agreed actions, a waiver, or punitive steps if progress is lacking.

Countries currently named by the State Department include: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan. Pakistan represents the worst situation in the world for religious freedom for countries not currently designated as "countries of particular concern," and USCIRF has concluded it overwhelmingly meets the threshold established in the Act. 

The facts speak for themselves.  As the report states:

The Pakistani government failed to effectively intervene against a spike in targeted violence against the Shi'a Muslim minority community, as well as violence against other minorities.  With elections scheduled for May 2013, additional attacks against religious minorities and candidates deemed "unIslamic" will likely occur. Chronic conditions remain, including the poor social and legal status of non-Muslim religious minorities and the severe obstacles to free discussion of sensitive religious and social issues faced by the majority Muslim community.  The country's blasphemy law, used predominantly in Punjab province but also nationwide, targets members of religious minority communities and dissenting Muslims and frequently results in imprisonment.  USCIRF is aware of at least 16 individuals on death row and 20 more serving life sentences.  The blasphemy law, along with anti-Ahmadi laws that effectively criminalize various practices of their faith, has created a climate of vigilante violence.  Hindus have suffered from the climate of violence and hundreds have fled Pakistan for India.  Human rights and religious freedom are increasingly under assault, particularly women, members of religious minority communities, and those in the majority Muslim community whose views deemed "un-Islamic." The government has proven unwilling or unable to confront militants perpetrating acts of violence against other Muslims and religious minorities. 

Designating Pakistan as a CPC would make religious freedom a key element in the bilateral relationship and start a process to encourage Islamabad to undertake needed reforms. 

There are a range of issues that should be on the bilateral agenda, whether or not Pakistan is designated a CPC. The U.S. government should include discussions on religious freedom and religious tolerance in U.S.-Pakistan strategic dialogues and summits, as well as urge Pakistan to protect religious minorities from violence and actively prosecute those committing acts of violence against Shi'as, Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, and others; unconditionally release individuals currently jailed for blasphemy; repeal or reform the blasphemy law; and repeal anti-Ahmadi laws.   The United States can also highlight to the new government how the Federal Ministry for National Harmony is an institution unique among other nations, and maintaining it would keep a partner to discuss ways to promote religious tolerance and freedom.  For sure, none of these are easy, so naming as a CPC would cut through the distractions and help create the political will to act.

The situation in Pakistan is acute, with the increasing violence against diverse religious communities and a system of laws that violate human rights.  With a new government soon coming to power, there is a unique opportunity to work together to confront these threats to Pakistan.  At the same time, negative pressures could tilt the new government in the wrong direction.  For instance, the Pakistani Taliban's targeting of "secular politicians" could give traction to their offer from late 2012 to cease violence in exchange for constitutional amendments to install their religious vision over the country. The CPC process would support Pakistanis who want a better future for their country and counterbalance these pressures -- if the Pakistani government fails to address these issues concretely, penalties could follow after a CPC designation. 

The United States is Pakistan's only friend that has the heft and desire to encourage it to tackle these difficult challenges.  For sure, the U.S.-Pakistani relationship is complicated and designating a CPC would likely complicate things further.  However, to protect all Pakistanis, these issues cannot be ignored and must be confronted and addressed. 

Knox Thames is the Director of Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  Any personal views expressed are his own and may or may not reflect the views of the commission. He can be followed on Twitter @thames22.

The looming drawdown of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan in 2014 has raised a multitude of concerns, among them fear that the al-Qaeda organization in Pakistan [hereafter AQC] will return to set up camp. This is overwrought. Any residual U.S. force should contain a heavy concentration of Special Forces operators whose top priority will be hunting al-Qaeda remnants who move back across the border into Afghanistan. AQC may be able to carve out small pieces of territory, but even a small number of U.S. troops in tandem with unmanned aerial vehicles should ensure it enjoys little more freedom of movement than at present in Pakistan's Tribal Areas.

Pakistani militants are likely to receive less attention. This is understandable. Yet their access to territory in Afghanistan, alongside the sanctuaries they already enjoy in Pakistan, is cause for significant concern, as it may amplify the threats they pose to India, to Pakistan, and to U.S. interests in the region. Moreover, as Secretary of State John Kerry seeks to jumpstart stalled peace negotiations, it is worth noting that their presence in Afghanistan further complicates the already tortuous search for a settlement.

Home Away from Home

Most of the major Pakistani militant groups and a host of minor ones are active in Afghanistan. They fight alongside the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network, both of which enjoy sanctuary in and support from Pakistan. Some Pakistani organizations are also engaged in a revolutionary jihad against their own government, with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan leading that charge. Organizationally, whether to wage war against the state is the greatest dividing line among militant groups endogenous to and based in Pakistan. Operationally, it does not preclude collaboration on either side of the Durand Line.

Anti-state militants displaced by Pakistani military incursions into FATA and the Swat Valley in 2009-2010 have regrouped across the border in Afghanistan. From there, they launch cross-border raids into Pakistan. The two countries have been waging a low-level border war since the late 2000s, fueling suspicions in Pakistan that Afghan forces are providing sanctuary and support to these militants. Even if true, such assistance would pale in comparison to Pakistan's well-documented support for insurgents fighting in Afghanistan.

Militants fighting against the Pakistani state are sometimes co-located in Northeastern Afghanistan with those from Pakistan's proxy organizations, most notably members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) who have been active there since the mid-2000s. Though still small in number, LeT's presence in Afghanistan has grown since 2010. This likely owes to an increased need for a safety release valve following pressure on the group to reduce its India-centric activities after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, as well as the appeal of the Afghan front for those motivated to fight America or simply to join the biggest jihad in town. Pakistan's intelligence services also may have endorsed this expansion as a means of gathering information about those anti-state militants pushed across the border. The past several years have witnessed attempts by LeT to solidify its presence in the Salafi-strongholds of northern Afghanistan where the group has longstanding roots.

In short, though militants overwhelmingly remain based across the border in Pakistan, Northeastern Afghanistan has become a sanctuary not only for Pakistani militants arrayed against the state, but also those aligned with it.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

No one knows with certainty how the conflict in Afghanistan will evolve once U.S. and NATO troops draw down or what the cascading impacts will be on Pakistan, India or the region. But several broad pathways are easy to envision. The worst-case scenario is a conflagration that draws in regional actors, most notably India. The more likely outcome is an ongoing insurgency that does not lead to the overthrow of the state, but also does not escalate into a full-blown proxy war involving countries other than Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hopes for a political settlement between the Afghan government and the insurgents don't look good at present, but even this best-case result wouldn't come without challenges. In all cases, the drawdown of U.S. and NATO forces brings with it the opportunity for Pakistani militants - pro- and anti-state - to take greater advantage of cross-border sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

In the absence of a negotiated settlement and amidst an ongoing insurgency, relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan could deteriorate further, leading Kabul to provide the TTP and associated anti-Pakistan militants the type of support Islamabad already suspects they are receiving. As a result, Pakistan could face not only a domestic jihadist insurgency, but also the sort of durable threat of cross-border jihadist violence that it has long supported against its neighbors. Moreover, an escalating proxy war could create conditions for a greater instability along both sides of the border. A conflict that draws in regional actors, particularly India, would exacerbate this dynamic. But even increased bilateral tensions, fueling and fueled by a cross-border proxy war, would have a destabilizing impact. For U.S. officials, this would further complicate an already labyrinthine regional environment and could impact the operations of any residual force.

Regardless of the outcome in Afghanistan, LeT is likely to keep a small presence in the Northeast where its members have worked to carve out territory. The group is also likely to agitate for regenerating the jihad directly against India, both in the form of terrorist attacks against the mainland and increased activity in Kashmir. The latter has been torpid since the late 2000s. Several incidents there this year may augur the rumblings of renewed jihadist activity, though it is too early to know whether they will amount to much. Important here is that access to safe haven in Afghanistan for LeT and other Pakistani proxy groups conceivably reduces ISI situational awareness of what their members there are doing. This would increase plausible deniability for militant leaders under some form of Pakistani state control and, thus, for the Pakistani state itself. Each could conceivably claim they did not sanction plots orchestrated from across the border, with the result being to heighten the likelihood of such attacks occurring. This is of most concern to New Delhi. Given LeT's past readiness to include Westerners in its target set for attacks in India, this rightly concerns U.S. policymakers and practitioners too.

In the event of a settlement that enabled the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network to migrate back across the border into Afghanistan, it is possible that elements from among them would provide at least a modicum of assistance to India-centric groups with factions operating there. More troubling, it is far from certain that all Afghan-centric militants would buy into any settlement. Questions exist regarding how much control the Quetta Shura (leaders of the Afghan Taliban currently or previously based in Quetta, Balochistan) has over its own foot soldiers, much less those operating under the banner of the Haqqani Network or the Pakistani Taliban. Some could be expected to fight on and, depending on the posture of the Pakistani state, to assist the TTP in launching cross-border attacks as well. Once again, the result could be a durable threat of cross-border jihadist violence. As a result, accounting for Islamabad's compulsions vis-à-vis those militant groups straddling the Durand Line and waging a domestic insurgency against Pakistan also adds another wrinkle to any peace negotiations.

One Factor Among Many

Multiple variables including host nation preferences, domestic political and budgetary constraints and broader U.S. defense policy objects will (and should) determine the size, composition, and focus of any residual U.S. force in Afghanistan post-2014. It is unrealistic to imagine that the main focus of any residual force will not remain on supporting the Afghan National Army and targeting al-Qaeda along with other actors that have the intent and capabilities to launch transnational attacks. However, the presence of anti-Pakistan militants and possibility for escalating cross-border jihadist violence means U.S. and NATO officials will need to contend with whether to target them too.

Doing so could help serve a political purpose, reducing the threat to Pakistan's internal stability and in so doing possibly helping to defuse regional tensions. However, there is no guarantee such a payoff would accrue. More tangibly, it might provide a means for transactional targeting, i.e. the U.S. removes anti-Pakistani militants from the Afghan battlefield in exchange for assistance capturing, killing or otherwise curtailing militants of significant concern in Pakistan. Yet even this would mean sparing sparse resources and require buy-in from a host government in Kabul that has very different priorities.

Hunting India-centric militants hiding in Afghanistan, though likely to engender less animosity in Kabul, would come with its own set of hurdles. To begin with, debates persist about the costs and benefits of aggressively pursuing the small number of LeT militants in Afghanistan if the group is not actively targeting the U.S. homeland. The direct threat consists primarily in the form of terrorist attacks against India that could include Western interests. Indirectly, of course, are concerns another Indo-Pak crisis might eventuate. Either way, it is unclear what role, if any, the small number of LeT militants in Afghanistan would play in generating such attacks. As already noted, the more relevant issue is one of plausible deniability. This suggests the need to realign intelligence officers and analysts whose expertise will be essential for identifying emerging and evolving jihadist threats in the region, thus making it more difficult for militants to carry forward plots or plausibly claim no involvement in them.

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan and re-forged its relationship with Pakistan in order to destroy al-Qaeda Central. Finishing that job is important. However, with the drawdown looming and AQC's capability to strike the homeland severely degraded, Washington must begin reorienting its South Asian counterterrorism architecture in line with the decreasing threat from al-Qaeda and growing potential for regional attacks against U.S. interests and regional instability post-2014. Although it is but one component among many, the availability of sanctuary for Pakistani militants in Afghanistan should inform this process. It also must factor in broader U.S. foreign and defense policy planning for South Asia, including any strategy designed to reach a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan.

Stephen Tankel is an assistant professor at American University and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His next book, provisionally titled Peripheral Jihads, explores how jihadist groups in S. Asia, the Middle East and N. Africa adapted to the post-9/11 environment and will be published by Columbia University Press in 2014.

The life of a Pakistani politician is fraught with life-threatening situations. In recent years, several high-profile politicians have been assassinated: former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007, and Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti in 2011. The dangerous trend has continued this month with the targeting of lower-profile candidates running for office in the upcoming May 11 parliamentary elections. In these instances, the Pakistani Taliban or religious extremists were the perpetrators, choosing their targets for either "un-Islamic" secular and progressive values or their perceived cooperation with the United States against Pakistani militants and in the war in Afghanistan.   

Beyond the tragic loss of life, the assassinations have the added casualty of limiting the space within which Pakistani leaders can safely operate. Taliban attacks have pressured willing and able voices against extremism into silence on issues-such as minority rights, girls' education, and trade with India-that Pakistani society must publicly debate in order to fully embrace and institutionalize them. Those who remain vocal do so at great personal and professional risk: Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman faces charges in Pakistani courts for her support of revisions to the blasphemy law.

In the context of upcoming polls, even more worrisome is that the specter of assassination and violence could affect the election outcome, and potentially the representation of key Pakistani constituencies. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan announced the group's intention to target candidates and party workers affiliated with the ruling coalition's Awami National Party (ANP), Pakistan People's Party (PPP), and Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). ANP and MQM candidates and activists have already been injured or killed-fear tactics intended to directly handicap the ruling coalition's chances of returning to power.

Another side effect of the Pakistani Taliban's killing spree is that the specific pressure on the ANP could skew the Pashtun vote. After the 2008 election, many had high hopes for the secular party based in the Pashtun-concentrated Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. But even then security threats from the Pakistani Taliban prevented ANP from fully taking advantage of the mandate the voters had given it. ANP was viewed as a potential counter to the influence of religious parties like Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), which swept national and provincial elections during the Musharraf years as part of a coalition of religious parties known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal.

The Pakistani Taliban's renewed targeting of ANP could improve the chances of religious parties who have, in the past, shared common ideological ground with them. The influence of religious parties has typically been downplayed, but what they are selling might have a new buyer. A survey conducted by the British Council earlier this year revealed that 38 percent of Pakistani youth surveyed believed Islamic law is better suited for Pakistan than democracy.   

But the Pakistani Taliban has also threatened some religious parties, such as JUI, for cooperation with the federal government. The real worry is not the return of religious parties but the disenfranchisement of Pakistani Pashtuns, who may decide to stay at home on election day to avoid violence. This is the last thing the Pakistani state needs in a province that borders the ungoverned tribal areas and where the notion of a greater Pashtun homeland-"Pashtunistan"-exists in spirit if not fully in practice. ANP also faces threats in Karachi, where the growing Pashtun population has become ensconced in the city's gangland-style political culture. Any handicaps for Karachi's Pashtuns in the upcoming elections could also potentially worsen the security situation there.      

The PPP, which led the previous government with ANP as a coalition partner, faces similar challenges in reaching voters. President Asif Ali Zardari has been reluctant to participate in large public rallies during this campaign, and for good reason. The memory of the 2007 assassination of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, following a rally in Rawalpindi is still fresh among PPP leadership. Fears of assassination have kept Zardari out of the public eye for most of his term and now limit how much his son Bilawal Bhutto, the PPP's heir apparent, campaigns on behalf of the party as well.

Bhutto could have rallied the party's base at a time when the PPP needs it the most. Besides the PPP stronghold of interior Sindh, nowhere else is PPP guaranteed to dominate. Voter outreach is especially critical in north and central Punjab, the traditional domain of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and where Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has made inroads. Most elections analysts believe that if PTI can continue to tap into PML-N's base of support, especially among urban educated youth, then PPP's chances in Punjab are inadvertently strengthened. It can also benefit from the fact that the strength of PTI's "tsunami" appears to be tapering off. If PPP can access voters who are falling off the PTI bandwagon, it could have a chance in chipping away at PML-N's lead. But PPP cannot rely solely on PML-N's failures or PTI's wane.

For the time being, Pakistani Taliban threats continue to keep the most influential PPP politicians far from Punjab where it matters the most. Even more tragic is the possibility that ANP will be forced to boycott the elections. While much of the elections focus has been on the historic political transition afoot in Pakistan, the threats serve as a reminder of the tough road ahead for whoever manages to survive and come out on top.

Shamila N. Chaudhary is a South Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council from 2010-2011.

On March 19, Pakistan's government gave a briefing to the country's top military officials.

The topic of this high-level meeting was not the Taliban's takeover of the Tirah Valley, fresh tensions with Afghanistan, or other urgent national security matters. Rather, the briefing-delivered by the commerce secretary to the army, air force, and navy chiefs-was about tightening trade ties with India.

This issue has been a priority for Pakistan's civilian and military leadership alike since November 2011, when Pakistan announced its intention to extend Most-Favored Nation status to India (New Delhi granted this privilege to Islamabad in 1996). The decision was rooted in the realization that the potential benefits of a formal trade relationship with India-lower prices and variety for consumers; bigger export markets for producers; more employment for the masses; and greater revenues (currently lost to smuggling and other informal trade) for the government-were too immense to pass up.

Since then, both countries have continued to give strong indications that they intend to make their trade relationship a close and formal one. Last year, Pakistan abolished its positive list of goods that could be imported from India, and replaced it with a shorter negative list of items that couldn't be imported. The two capitals also launched a new integrated checkpoint at the Attari-Wagah border crossing (which serves the only land route for Pakistan-India trade), and concluded a landmark visa agreement that loosens travel restrictions.

This year, even after political relations took a plunge following a series of deadly exchanges along the Line of Control in January, the desire for trade cooperation remains strong. In recent weeks, each nation's ambassador to Washington has publicly affirmed-one at Harvard, the other at CSIS-the imperative of a strong trade relationship. Just days ago, Islamabad's envoy to New Delhi assured an audience of Indian and Pakistani businessmen that "we want trade normalization and there is a roadmap for that."

However, despite these encouraging signs, trade normalization remains a work in progress. Pakistan had pledged to phase out its negative list by the end of last year-thereby bringing the two countries closer to a fully operational MFN regime-yet today it remains in place.

So why the holdup?

One commonly cited explanation is the resistance of Pakistan's powerful agricultural interests, who fear the consequences of heavily subsidized, cheap food products coursing into Pakistan-particularly those, such as bananas and oranges, which Pakistani farmers already produce in abundance. Predictably, last November, the president of the Basmati Growers Association warned that his members faced "economic suicide." And the head of Farmers Associates Pakistan (a lobby group) threatened to literally block Indian agricultural products from entering Pakistan.

However, a new Wilson Center report on Pakistan-India trade, edited by Robert M. Hathaway and myself, presents a more complex picture. Some food producers actually relish the prospect of acquiring foodstuffs from India, because they believe such products will be of higher-quality then their own, and hence generate greater profits. Another surprising source of support is the textile industry, which believes it can capture major shares of the Indian market. Pakistani home textile and bed ware manufacturers have already explored joint venture options with Indian partners.

There is, however, strident opposition from other sectors. The pharmaceutical industry fears that India's surfeit of raw materials and large economies of scale will marginalize Pakistani products, while the chemical/synthetic fibers sector worries that India will dump its large fiber surplus in Pakistani markets. Our report also highlights opposition within the automobile industry. Manufacturers are anxious that Indian car parts will flood Pakistani markets and devastate local industry, and fear that Pakistani parts exports will suffer because Indian car makers prefer domestically manufactured parts. Islamabad has given in to the car industry's protectionist proclivities; the sector has nearly 400 items on the 1,209-item negative list-far more than any other sector.

Another likely reason for the MFN delay is politics. Security and territorial disputes have a historic habit of contaminating Pakistan-India trade relations at the most inopportune of times. In 1965, the two countries went to war over Kashmir, bringing an abrupt end to a promising period of commercial ties (in the preceding 18 years, the two nations had concluded 14 trade facilitation agreements). Banks in both countries were seized as enemy properties, and customs officials at the Wagah border crossing were the war's first civilian prisoners of war.

Nearly 50 years later, a more subtle dynamic is at play. Last June, an Indian government official lamented that momentum for trade normalization had slowed because Islamabad was linking trade to progress on the territorial issues of Siachen and Sir Creek. It's a lament that highlights a major obstacle to Pakistan-India trade normalization-because it exposes a major disconnect in each country's motivations for pursuing normalization.  

Back in April 2012, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar proclaimed that trade normalization would "put in place the conditions that will enable Pakistan to better pursue its principled positions" on territorial issues. Some observers, however, believe that New Delhi sees stronger commercial relations as an end in themselves. India-at least up to now-has demonstrated no interest in making the territorial concessions that Pakistan hopes closer trade ties will bring about. Islamabad likely understands this disconnect, and is hesitant to consummate MFN because it fears that the Pakistani public would, in time, perceive the move as a sacrificing of political and territorial issues for purely material gain.

Our report, drawing on the views of its eight contributors, offers 15 recommendations aimed at addressing these challenges to normalization. Several suggest how to get Pakistanis to embrace trade as a good thing in of itself. For example, Pakistan's media-a powerful influence on public opinion-should amplify the advantages of bilateral trade by spotlighting the positive sentiments of consumers and producers. Other recommendations focus on how to keep political/territorial issues from sabotaging trade ties. Both sides should remain committed to the Composite Dialogue-a formal process of ongoing bilateral talks that began in 2004 and encompass a wide range of topics, including territorial issues. Additionally, trade should be divorced from developments within the security realm. This means that New Delhi should not impose punitive trade measures or close its borders if Pakistan-based terrorists attack India.

The report also underscores the imperative of acting quickly to cement trade normalization-because global economic developments make doing so a virtual necessity. Rich-country trading partners of India and Pakistan are facing economic slowdowns, and Europe's financial crisis is contributing to diminished exports. Now is therefore the ideal time for India and Pakistan to more robustly tap into each other's markets. To that end, our recommendations call for the implementation of trade-facilitation measures that accelerate the path to normalization.

These include loosening transit restrictions (India and Pakistan restrict each other's ability to use the other's territory to reach third countries); enhancing trade route efficiency (this can be done by improving the quality of roads and railways, and by removing restrictions on the type and size of trucks and train cars); and establishing new private oversight institutions-including a dispute resolution mechanism-to guide the bilateral economic relationship. The emphasis here should be tackling non-tariff barriers (from long waiting times at border crossings to rejections of bank-issued letters of credit) that make many exporters-especially Pakistani-reluctant to pursue cross-border trade.

In recent days, Islamabad has refused to provide a timeframe for completing trade normalization, other than some vague assurances that the negative list will be phased out after this spring's elections. According to Pakistani insiders, such statements are genuine. All political parties in Pakistan fully endorse trade normalization, argue these observers, and whatever the composition of the next government, it will be determined to move forward.

For the sake of regional peace, let's hope so. A new National Intelligence Council study contends that trade may be the only way to keep South Asia peaceful over the next 20 years-because it's the most realistic strategy to dramatically boost employment in Pakistan, and thereby to reduce the prospects for youth radicalization and a new generation of militants who terrorize both Pakistan and India.

So while trade normalization has great potential payoffs for India and Pakistan, it also matters immensely for the rest of us. In the words of one of our report's contributors, "the entire world has a stake in peace in South Asia."

Michael Kugelman is the senior program associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He can be reached at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org and on Twitter @michaelkugelman

During a recent trip to the region, Secretary of State John Kerry decided not to visit Pakistan out of respect for the country's ongoing electoral processes. He made the right choice.

The United States has repeatedly found itself in the middle of Pakistan's domestic politics, a problem partially of its own making. In 2006, the United States tried to broker a power-sharing deal between exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and then-President Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf, who unceremoniously took power in a bloodless coup against the Nawaz Sharif government in 1999, desperately needed domestic and international legitimization of his presidency. Bhutto - the popular scion of a political family from Sindh - could offer the domestic portion of that by participating in national elections that would be sure to put her back into office as Prime Minister. An increasingly unpopular Musharraf could stay on as president.

While U.S. mediation was warranted to some extent on account of the high stakes involved in the "global war on terror," the result was disastrous. After months of secretive meetings with a coterie of high-level American officials and informal representatives, Bhutto returned to Pakistan from exile in Dubai only to be assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban ten weeks later. Ever since, the United States has in some way been blamed for her death and the circumstances following it, most notably the election of Bhutto's widow, Asif Ali Zardari, as President of Pakistan.

If Secretary Kerry had visited Pakistan, he would have inevitably signaled de facto American support for the incumbent Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and co-chairman Zardari, who remains President until September. Zardari and the PPP would have relished such attention given their dismal electoral chances, but the United States did not take the bait.

Maneuvers to elicit U.S. support for legitimacy within Pakistan are not new tactics for Pakistani politicians. Since his self-initiated exile in 2008, Musharraf has diligently sought U.S. government support to anoint his return to Pakistani politics. After all, if the United States did this for Bhutto in 2006, then why not for him - the secular, U.S.-leaning, cosmopolitan general turned statesman who enjoys an occasional scotch?

Musharraf should get credit for trying. He lobbied hard within U.S. political circles, with his Philadelphia-based office regularly releasing photographs and announcements of his meetings with members of Congress. In a slightly disingenuous move in 2011, his office even released a photograph of Musharraf with Vice President Joe Biden at a football game, suggesting the meeting was planned. The Vice President's office quickly covered its bases by clarifying that it was a chance encounter with "no substantive conversation."    

In reality, Musharraf tried many times to get meetings at the State Department and White House but failed. Don't look for the United States to change track now that Musharraf is back in Pakistan. U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Rick Olson recently said of his return: "I don't see this as a terribly large or significant event...he doesn't have a great deal of support." The White House later chimed in to say Musharraf's return was "an internal matter." And recall that just the week before, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland clarified in a morning briefing that the United States "has no favorites among Pakistani politicians and we are looking forward to work with whoever is elected on May 11." An unnamed senior State Department official was even blunter, saying the United States "did not want to lead anyone to conclude anything about where" U.S. interests may lie."

It is now clearer than ever before that the United States does not want to get involved in Pakistan's domestic politics. Letting political affairs run their course is the best thing the United States - or any other country, individual or institution - can do. Given negative Pakistani public and government perceptions of the United States, it is extremely unlikely that the United States could effectively achieve its objectives if it chose to get more involved.

No doubt America will find another way to sustain stable and friendly relations with the Pakistani government - too much is at stake. Until the end of 2014, the United States will remain heavily dependent on the Pakistani military's cooperation in keeping NATO supply routes from Afghanistan through Pakistan open. Longer term challenges of Pakistan-based Al Qaeda members and affiliates, as well as Pakistan's nuclear program, demand the United States has a more normalized relationship with Islamabad. Time will tell if the United States can truly go cold turkey on getting involved in Pakistani politics to advance its own interests.

Shamila N. Chaudhary is a South Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council from 2010-2011.

Last Wednesday night, four members of Pakistan's paramilitary Rangers force were killed when an attacker threw a grenade at their vehicle in Korangi Town, a neighborhood on the east side of Karachi. Despite the Pakistani government touting its historic democratic victory, concern over escalating violence in Karachi, a sprawling metropolis of 18 million people, continues to grow. A permeating sense of instability has only worsened a deteriorating economic crisis, both of which are stark reminders of the failure of the government and security apparatus to maintain law and order in a city that promises to spiral out of control. In light of upcoming elections, it seems likely that the violence will continue to increase.

According to estimates from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, close to 2,284 people were killed in violent attacks in Karachi in 2012. By some media estimates, targeted killings and a string of deadly bomb blasts cost the lives of 500 people in 72 days of this year alone. Victims range from civilians to policemen, the paramilitary Rangers to development workers, journalists to lawyers.

Pakistan as a whole has recently witnessed a sharp rise in brutal attacks by Sunni extremists on the minority Shia group, which constitutes close to 20% of the population. These attacks have been concentrated primarily in the southwestern province of Balochistan, but Karachi has seen its own wave of sectarian killing and ethnic strife. The city came to a standstill when on March 3, a powerful blast ripped through AbbasTown near a Shia Imambargah, destroying two apartment buildings and leaving 50 people dead, more than 200 injured, and innumerable homeless.

Law enforcement agencies remained conspicuously absent for up to four hours from an area engulfed by flames after the attack, raising serious questions about the government's commitment to protecting citizens from militant attacks, and the functioning of the city's security apparatus. The mourning families endured further injustice and humiliation when two men were killed and a dozen injured in armed clashes that occurred at the funeral procession a day later. Authorities continue to arrest suspects, and many believe that Sunni extremist groups Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which claimed recent massive attacks on Hazara Shias in Quetta, Balochistan, are behind such incidents.

On March 6, just days after the March 3 blast, the entire city of Karachi was abruptly shut down in a matter of just 22 minutes, during which seven people were killed in separate incidents of violence, gunshots were reported, and people scurried to safely get home. Social media was abuzz with those transmitting real-time updates on areas that were blocked or unsafe to travel.  Amid the violence, Karachi's biggest and most influential political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), called for all businesses and educational institutions to remain closed until the Abbas Town culprits were arrested. Most Karachiites were disgruntled by the ‘indefinite' strike, which they feared would damage the city's economy even further. Daily wagers like Shahnawaz Shahzad, a fruit seller near Karachi's area of Lyari, complained, "I have a family of six to feed. This daily business of strikes affects us very strongly. If I can't make a selling, my family has to sleep hungry."

Businesses and public transportation closed quickly, and hospitals were put on high alert. For a city that is, unfortunately, used to daily violence such as thefts, robberies, and car snatching, Karachi seems to have sunk even further into abyss.

Earlier this month, an attempted kidnapping of a young girl at Karachi's high-fashion Dolmen Mall raised chilling concerns about the collapse of the security apparatus in even the wealthier urban centers. Social media has also been flooded with rumors about the infamous "Black Prado" that preys in Karachi's affluent areas of Defense, Clifton and Zamzama. Gangs of men, traveling in Black Prados with tinted windows were said to be kidnapping two young girls every day. Though no official complaints have been registered, rumors were rife that young girls from elite families were gang-raped, videotaped and then blackmailed.

Whether actual or rumor, violent incidents and petty crime have made Karachi's citizens more cautious about their movements. Many of those living in affluent areas of the city have resorted to enrolling in self-defense classes, particularly the women. Not surprisingly, many citizens feel that with the run-up to elections, bomb blasts, targeted killings, kidnappings and petty crime are expected to worsen, making the city more unsafe. Following the surge of violence in Karachi, an opinion poll conducted on March 9^th by the Express Tribune asked whether citizens considered purchasing a gun given Karachi's law and order situation. From a sample of 1,078 respondents, 69% responded affirmatively

In one of the most recent cases of violence, unidentified assassins shot a prominent Karachi social worker, Parveen Rehman, inside her car at a traffic intersection. Rehman was the director of the Orangi Pilot Project, and dedicated her life to working for the vulnerable and disadvantaged in Karachi's Orangi slum. While no particular group has claimed responsibility, suspicion has fallen on Karachi's ruthless land mafia, against whom she remained a vocal critic. Shortly after her death, students and media outlets paid homage to the courageous worker, hailing her as the "Mother of Karachi."

Just two weeks ago, on March 30, the principal of a Karachi girl's school in Ittehad Town, the Nation Highway School, was shot dead, and six girls between the ages of 8 and 10 were injured, in a brazen attack on the premises during an award distribution. Two militants threw a grenade at the wall and entered while opening fire. Attacks such as this continue to raise concern over girls' education, even in urban centers. While physical attacks on girls' schools are so common that they appear to be hardly even newsworthy in areas considered to be backward and militant-ridden like Swat and FATA, similar attacks in Karachi are on the rise, a disturbing trend in Pakistan's largest city.

Many Karachiites claim that the city, instead of being secured by police and law enforcement agencies, is now a level playing field for criminals and militants. Given the mounting security concerns and lack of a healthy investor climate, many businesses have relocated to foreign countries, while close to 5,000 traders and businesses have completely closed down. Moves such as this can have a devastating impact on what is believed to be the country's economic and industrial hub. According to State Bank figures, Foreign Direct Investment stood at an admirable $5.410 billion dollars in 2008. The PPP's five-year tenure has failed to boost the figures. FDI fell to a mere $820 million during the 2012 fiscal year, and the Pakistani rupee dropped in value by more than 63%.

Citizens have called for a military operation against militants and gangs in Karachi, a move that the government has staunchly opposed. Many feel that the PPP government refused to turn to the Army for fear of admitting its inability to maintain law and order right before elections. And a defense source recently admitted that Chief of Army Staff, General Kiyani had taken note of the deteriorating situation of Karachi saying that, "the situation in Karachi has deteriorated to alarming proportions and violence could get out of control if urgent action is not taken immediately."

Unfortunately, the violence in Karachi does not stem from any one particular root. The city is plagued by militancy, ethnic and sectarian strife, land mafia, gangs and petty criminals, amongst others. The dire situation in Karachi is only made worse by a leadership unwilling to conduct major reforms in governance and enforce prompt accountability. The inadequate training and motivation of law enforcement agencies such as the police, partly composed of persons accused of crimes and appointed/re-appointed on partisan grounds, along with a lack of co-ordination between intelligence agencies and effective, pre-emptive actions has led to a complete failure of law and order.

Pakistanis doubt that the new government elected on May 11 will be able address the rampant and swift deterioration of Karachi's security. Many extremist groups have strong bases in Pakistan's largest province of Punjab. A strong contender to form the next government, Nawaz Sharif's PML-N, has had no qualms about forming electoral alliances with the Ahl-e Sunnat Wal Jammat (ASWJ) organization, a political faction believed to have ties to broader and banned jihadi networks such as the deadly sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and the Tehrik-eTaliban Pakistan (TTP). Nawaz is currently the frontrunner to become Pakistan's next Prime Minister, and alliances such as this further illustrate the improbability of political parties taking concrete actions against terrorist groups, whether before or after elections.  

The escalating violence and disorder has also raised concerns about the likelihood of having free, fair and transparent electoral procedures in Karachi in May. Poor governance will continue to enable disorder, further compounded by the heat and strife of election fever. The interim government, limited by its mandate, will be unable to address the growing crisis. The only alternative seems to be bringing in the Army for a limited period of time to stabilize the situation and reduce violence before polling takes place. However, given the Army's notoriously power hungry history, this, too, seems like an unlikely proposal. Understandably then, most Karachiites feel like they're on their own.

Without a doubt, Pakistan has made history with its first ever civilian government to finish a complete term. However, bad governance and a surge in large-scale violence and petty crime have left many citizens questioning the price they have paid to usher in democracy.

Arsla Jawaid is Assistant Editor at the monthly foreign policy magazine, SouthAsia. Arsla holds a BA in International Relations from Boston University, with a focus on foreign policy and security studies. She can be followed on Twitter @arslajawaid.

Term limits preclude Hamid Karzai from seeking re-election in the Afghan presidential election slated to occur one year from today (parliamentary elections will follow in 2015). So, for the first time since 2001, Afghanistan will soon have a new chief executive along with a new parliament, a leadership transition that has immense implications for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, yet one that has elicited little discussion in Washington. Here, policy makers and pundits chatter about talking with the Taliban and argue vociferously about the number of troops that should remain after 2014, an argument that is utterly irrelevant if the Afghan elections go badly, particularly the presidential election, and Afghanistan descends into civil war. Whether it's 8,000 or 13,600 or 20,000 or more or less, the post-2014 U.S. and NATO force will be too small to halt Afghan political and military disintegration.

The success or failure of Afghanistan's upcoming elections does not depend so much upon who is elected but rather how they are elected. Regardless of who wins, Afghans must believe the electoral process was reasonably fair and representative or the new government will be viewed as illegitimate, prompting spiraling violence and instability. Despite these existential stakes, however, the United States has shied away from publicly expressing its expectations and concerns about details of the developing Afghan electoral process. This unspoken caution springs from the circumstances surrounding Afghanistan's 2009 national elections, during which the international community roundly criticized President Karzai for presiding over an election marred by significant fraud and Karzai, in turn, accused the international community, particularly U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, of wrongfully intruding upon Afghan sovereignty by supporting opposition candidates.

Given the hour and stakes, the United States should move beyond its circumspect and cautious approach, and instead clearly signal to all candidates and parties that it will use all of its legitimate influence in pursuit of credible elections. If needed, the US should spend more than the roughly 200 million dollars earmarked for the Afghan electoral process by USAID. When totaled, even the most sweeping electoral support costs are paltry when compared to the cost variations associated with the residual troop level debate. For example, even by conservative estimates the choice of 20,000 instead of 8,000 residual U.S. forces in Afghanistan means at least 12 billion dollars in annual additional expense.

Afghans recall the flawed elections of 2009, and many or most Afghans expect no better in 2014. Not only must the electoral process itself be strengthened, somehow public perceptions of the electoral process must also improve in the short time remaining before the presidential election. It would be a tragedy if a legitimate victory by a Karzai-backed candidate were viewed as illegitimate simply because a false public perception existed that Karzai abused his powers when he hadn't. Few besides Al Qaeda and the Taliban should want such a result.

A major public relations campaign is needed to counter Afghan voter skepticism and persuade the Afghan people that neither President Karzai nor his administration will inappropriately tamper with the upcoming elections. To outweigh voter skepticism and insidious rumors, the ideal public relations campaign would be broadly supported by diverse Afghan elites and tout an honest and robust effort to address electoral corruption, including campaign finance issues. And whenever the Karzai regime's use of executive powers could directly or indirectly influence the elections, President Karzai should publicly engage in a broadly consultative process across a credible spectrum of political elites to guide the use of his power. Secretary of State John Kerry's uniquely strong relationship with President Karzai could be critically important in this effort. Not only might Secretary Kerry influence Karzai to engage in such a publicly consultative process, Kerry's credible voice of approval of both the process and the resultant electoral decisions can help sway a skeptical Afghan populous.

Unfortunately, again with only a year to go, Afghanistan's election law has not been finalized by its parliament. Here, too, U.S. officials should weigh in quite frankly concerning their expectations and concerns. Further dithering compresses the time for electoral preparations and lessens the likelihood of publicly perceived electoral legitimacy. Worse, delay heightens the likelihood that President Karzai will fill the void with an executive decree establishing the electoral process. If this occurs, it must be accompanied by an extraordinarily robust and very public consultative process plus broad public agreement by diverse political elites. Again, absent broadly credible endorsements, such an executive decree may fuel false public perceptions that Karzai is trying to manipulate the outcome. The end result could be disastrous whatever the residual US troop levels.

President Karzai has said the democratic transfer of power from his administration to an elected successor is the greatest legacy he could leave his country. He's quite right if Afghans accept the election results as fair. Given the hour and stakes, the U.S. must now act openly to help assure they are.

Former Congressman Jim Marshall is the President of the United States Institute of Peace.

Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)

Roderic Braithwaite, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 (London: Profile Books, 2011)

Artemy M. Kalinovsky, A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011)

The idea that history offers lessons for the present is uncontroversial and common to the point of cliché.  Yet, American foreign policy decisions often proceed with barely a look to the past.  And so we were informed in 2009 by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, likely to return as a fixture in future Democratic administrations, "[T]here's absolutely no valid comparison between the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan" and the U.S.-led campaign to enable the Afghan people to "reclaim their country."  Is that so? 

In her award-winning book about the Vietnam War, Fire in the Lake, Frances FitzGerald states:

Americans ignore history, for them everything has always seemed new under the sun....Americans see history as a straight line and themselves standing at the cutting edge of it as representatives for all mankind.  They believe in the future as if it were a religion; they believe that there is nothing they cannot accomplish, that solutions wait somewhere for all problems like brides.

Just as history's lessons were dismissed as advisers begat brigades in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan has been discarded as irrelevant to our own war by American policymakers, commanders, and commentators.  This has left us, in the words of Lord Butler of Brockwell, "like a driver who commits to some manoeuvre in the road without looking into the rear mirror."  Indeed, American leaders believe we are on a different road entirely.  While there are significant differences between the two interventions, the road winds through the same mountains.

Two books released as the latest incarnation of foreign intervention winds down - one by Rodric Braithwaite and the other by Artemy Kalinovsky - tell the troubled tale of the Soviet intervention and withdrawal.  In doing so, they shatter mischaracterizations that prevent the West from looking to this decade as a source of lessons.   The only major flaws of these books, Afgantsy and The Long Goodbye, is that they were published years too late to serve as rejoinders to Undersecretary Flournoy and others who came before her who insisted that Afghanistan, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, stood "at the dawn of a new day." 

Yet, while Braithwaite and especially Kalinovksy draw on previously unpublished Soviet records and interviews, they were not the first to strike at the myths of the Soviet intervention rooted in the Cold War.  Almost twenty years ago, Diego Cordovez, the U.N.'s point man on Afghanistan in the 1980s, and journalist Selig S. Harrison produced the insightful Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal.  These three books demand to be read and revisited in combination.   They very much complement each other.  Braithwaite's Afgantsy provides a vivid, novelistic account of the war in its entirety.  Kalinovsky's more scholarly text provides the oft-missing Soviet perspective based on Politburo records, now housed at the Wilson Center thanks to Kalinovsky himself.  Cordovez and Harrison give us the ultimate insider's account, bringing readers along for the ride as the U.N. emissary shuttles back and forth between Moscow, Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad, furiously working to get deadly foes to sit down at a table and talk.

The common Western narrative holds that once Soviet forces crossed their southern border into Afghanistan in December 1979, they were modern-day Cossacks waging a war of unmitigated brutality.  With U.S. support, the noble mujahideen prevailed.  This narrative, rooted in the hostile spirit of the Cold War, tells us we have nothing to learn from the Soviets in Afghanistan because our mission is so different in its purpose, aims and methods.   Our very nature is so different that comparisons are useless.   Or so we tell ourselves, and in doing so ignore the nuances of history. 

The Soviets also had trouble reconciling their mission with Afghan history.  In one memorable exchange captured by Kalinovsky, Soviet Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Mikhail Kapista cited the British experience in Afghanistan in the 19^th Century.  Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko responded, "Do you mean to compare our internationalist troops with imperialist troops?"  Kapitsa retorted, "No, our troops are different - but the mountains are the same!"

There are many aspects of the Soviet experience relevant to the current U.S.-led campaign, but none are more relevant to the present day than the Soviet efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement and withdraw their military forces.  On these aspects of the war before the war, these three books have a great deal to say, primarily by way of three key lessons:  Even a "reconciliation" that promises substantial government concessions may not succeed. Timing is everything. Pakistan is not to be trusted.  

Reconciliation

By the time Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to power in 1985, the view that the Soviet war in Afghanistan was a quagmire was commonly held in the Politburo and in the military. Frustration with Afghan partners - particularly General Secretary Babrak Karmal - was at an all-time high, leading to his replacement with Mohammad Najibullah in 1986.  Gorbachev came to accept that the Soviets would not leave a socialist government in their wake, but he was not ready to abandon their client regime entirely. He pushed a second, internal track on Najibullah: the policy of "National Reconciliation," which was far reaching in its concessions to the mujahideen.

The reconciliation program sought to reach out to biddable elements in the armed opposition, as well as non-Communist political and religious leaders not involved in the rebellion. In doing so, they sought to strengthen the position of the Afghan armed forces.  Through a re-tooled aid package, more emphasis on outreach to tribes, efforts to make Afghan officials more independent, and dialogue with insurgent commanders, the Soviets hoped to set the conditions for a durable state as they planned to withdraw. Attempts to make the Afghan government more representative, rather than dominated by the ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), were key.  The new policy was announced in December 1986. That same month, Gorbachev called Najibullah to Moscow and informed him that a military withdrawal from Afghanistan was now official Soviet policy. The government, with Soviet advisers over their shoulders, drew up a new constitution that established "an Islamic legal system run by an independent judiciary, greater freedom of speech, and the election of a president by a loya jirga assembly consisting of parliament and tribal and religious leaders."

While sensible, the National Reconciliation program arrived too late.  All sides were too entrenched.  The Khalq and Parcham factions of the PDPA were still at loggerheads.  The "Peshawar Seven" and "Tehran Eight" mujahideen parties were strong and confident in the countryside and the mountains, dripping with a desire for revenge and a hatred of the Kabul-based government.  The Pakistanis and the Americans doubted the Soviets and the Afghan government were serious about a negotiated settlement.  And they understood that, regardless of Soviet intentions, a compromise on their parts was not necessary.  One independent-minded Soviet colonel wrote in a letter: "[O]ne has to keep in mind that the counter-revolution is aware of the strategic decision of the Soviet leadership to withdraw the Soviet troops from the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] ...The counter-revolution will not be satisfied with partial power today, knowing that tomorrow it can have it all."

Timing

Gorbachev also fumbled the timing of announcing troop withdrawals. In February 1988, against the advice of the Soviet negotiating team in Geneva, Gorbachev announced a full withdrawal would begin on May 15, assuming an agreement was reached in Geneva.  He hoped that his announcement and the signing of the accords would induce the United States and Pakistan to cease arming the mujahideen.  According to Harrison, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze had warned Gorbachev that "a formal commitment to a specific target date would give the impression of an urgent need to withdraw." Gorbachev was wrong and Shevardnadze was right.  The withdrawal timeline was one of the few cards the Soviets had left in their deck and Gorbachev gave it away.   Subsequent Soviet efforts to negotiate directly with the Peshawar Seven and Tehran Eight were futile.

In response to Gorbachev's announcement, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Schultz demanded that the the two superpowers take a symmetrical approach to the withdrawal of military aid to their respective proxies. In other words, American aid to the mujahideen and Soviet aid to the government would be withdrawn simultaneously. Early drafts of the accords had not envisioned symmetry. Gorbachev was apoplectic, but it was too late.  

Moscow had greater concerns linked to a successful withdrawal from Afghanistan - namely negotiations over American nuclear-tipped missiles in Europe. Success in these negotiations depended on improving relations with the United States.  And so, on April 14, 1988, the Geneva Accords were signed.  They committed the Soviets to execute a "front-loaded" withdrawal within nine months. The United States and the USSR agreed to "positive symmetry," meaning that aid continued to the mujahideen and the Afghan government alike, rather than negative symmetry, which would have withdrawn aid to both.  Besides, the Soviet leadership believed that the Accords, which prohibited Pakistani interference and intervention in Afghan affairs, would mitigate the problem of aid to the mujahideen. At any rate, Gorbachev assured Najibullah that, "Even in the harshest, most difficult circumstances, even under conditions of strict control - in any situation, we will provide you with arms."  Like the rest of the world, neither of them anticipated the dissolution of the Soviet Union less than four years later.

Pakistan

Pakistan has three interests vis-à-vis Afghanistan that endure to the present day: blunting Pashtun nationalism, preventing strategic encirclement by India, and maintaining strategic depth against India.  Support for violent Islamist non-state actors, from the Taliban of the present to the Peshawar Seven of the 1980s, has allowed them to accomplish all three.  With Pakistan under the leadership of pro-Islamist Zia ul Haq, the idea of a socialist state and Soviet forces on Pakistan's border was intolerable.

As early as 1980, the Central Committee of the Politburo in Moscow understood Pakistan was the key, and envisioned, according to Politburo records, "a complex of bilateral agreements between Afghanistan and its neighbors, above all Pakistan, and systems of corresponding guarantees from the USSR, USA."  As such, the USSR and the Republic of Afghanistan signed the Geneva Accords, which committed Afghanistan and Pakistan to mutual relations, non-interference and non-intervention as well as to "interrelationships for the settlement of the situation." The Geneva Accords committed Pakistan to cease support for the mujahideen.  As Cordovez explains, the whole negotiations process was premised on "international disengagement" that would "allow the Afghans themselves to sort out their differences." 

Anyone hoping for Pakistani "disengagement" was disappointed.  According to Shultz, when President Reagan asked Zia how he would counter Soviet accusations that aid to the mujahideen continued, Zia responded, "We will deny that there is any aid going through our territory.  After all, that's what we have been doing for eight years."  The UN monitoring mission - the key enforcement mechanism of the Accords - was an embarrassing failure.  Before the ink on the Accords was dry, the Soviets and Afghan government began lodging legitimate complaints against Pakistani violations of the agreements.   At one point, President Zia told the Soviet ambassador to Kabul that he would support a coalition that was divided in three between the former PDPA, "moderates," and the mujahideen.  We do not know if he was serious, however, because the offer ended with the Pakistani leader's own life when his plane crashed later that summer.  What we do know is that Pakistan has always sought to be kingmaker in Afghanistan, regardless of what outside powers do. 

In the face of these treaty violations, the Soviet leadership hinted they might keep their military forces in Afghanistan beyond the withdrawal deadline if the accords were not strictly adhered to.  The bluff failed.  The Soviets continued to withdraw their forces.  The last of them crossed back into the Soviet Union on February 15, 1989.  

The Nuances of History

History has not repeated itself in Afghanistan, but it has rhymed.  There are important differences between the Soviet and U.S.-led campaigns that are worth keeping in mind.  Brutal Soviet tactics, particularly early in the war, targeted entire communities.  This had a direct effect on how the international community, Pakistan, and the mujahideen responded, particularly in terms of their recalcitrance to negotiate in good faith. The Soviet campaign was more deadly and indiscriminant in its violence, resulting in the deaths of up to a million Afghans - about 9% of the Afghan population at the time (admittedly, this figure is debatable). By the time of the Soviet withdrawal, there were millions of Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan.  Since the U.S.-led intervention began in 2001, most of these refugees have returned.

The scholar Louis Dupree described the Soviet strategy as "migratory genocide."  In other words, the Soviets sought, in some provinces, to depopulate the countryside, the powerbase of the rebels.  Joseph Collins, a longtime observer of Afghanistan, argued that for the Soviets, "[t]here was no talk about protecting the population; Soviet operations were all about protecting the regime and furthering Soviet control."  Later in the war, the Soviets became obsessed with connecting the government and the population - but still, the Soviet campaign stands in contrast to that waged by ISAF, which has focused on controlling key rural areas and protecting rural communities.  There has been operational success on this front.  While there is reason to doubt these gains will endure, in this respect, the West has learned from the Soviet experience.  Now, it is time for the West, and America in particular, to learn from how they negotiated their withdrawal so as not to repeat their mistakes.

The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) coalition government is the first in Pakistani history to complete a full term, making PPP well-deserving of the credit many are giving it. PPP receives high marks for its improvements to the constitution, specifically in returning powers to the Prime Minister that were unduly given to the president during Pervez Musharraf's military rule, and devolving powers to the provinces.

But the accolades do not match up with the sentiments of voters. Several pre-election polls indicate that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will be the clear winner in Pakistan's upcoming general election. The PPP has been hurt by strong anti-incumbency sentiment among the electorate. Apparently, voters do not care that the PPP just made history.

The PPP's record on a host of issues fails to live up to the ambitious framework it laid out in its 2008 party manifesto, a pre-elections document outlining the party's principles and positions on policy priorities. Here we look at successes and failures in two areas - the economy and defense - that have garnered a great deal of attention since the beginning of PPP's term.                 

Economy

Ask anyone in Pakistan and they will tell you that the PPP did not deliver on its economic promises. However, some basic comparisons of the economy since 2008 show more mixed results.  

The PPP did follow through on its promise to lower inflation. In November 2008, just two months after President Asif Ali Zardari's inauguration, inflation rose to a thirty-year high of 25%. At the end of 2012, inflation dropped to 6.9%, the lowest in four years. This doesn't mean that Pakistanis can expect price stability for the foreseeable future. The International Monetary Fund warned that inflation could return to double digits in the 2012-2013 fiscal year because of continued government borrowing from the State Bank. This especially bad habit of the PPP government has had multiple adverse economic consequences; as a result, PPP majorly failed in its promise to ensure sound macro-economic policies. 

The PPP has followed through on aspects of its promise to bring progress to the doorstep of the workers, farmers and small businesses. Supported partially by the assistance of multilateral and bilateral donors, the government launched the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP). This initiative distributed more than $1 billion in cash transfers to 3.5 million families in poverty. BISP, combined with higher commodity prices and cash from bumper crops, contributed to the economic boom over the past several years in Pakistan's rural areas, where spending on both consumer products is higher than ever before. However, comparisons of household income during the first three years of the PPP's term show a more uneven growth for the rural poor, with incomes of urban households rising by 1.1% annually while those in rural areas declined by 0.8%.

The 2008 manifesto promised to ensure that energy shortages are eliminated. Under the PPP's watch, Pakistanis experienced some of the worst energy shortages in the country's history. Protests over power cuts turned violent. Senior government officials refuse to pay their personal electricity bills, a practice some government agencies also seem to engage in. The PPP attempted to initiate large-scale initiatives, such as the recently launched Iran-Pakistan oil pipeline and Daimer-Basha dam project, but to no avail. These projects require major capital investments and will take a long time to show results; their inauguration was viewed as more political stunt than genuine attempt to eliminate energy shortages. Other efforts to eliminate energy subsidies and increase fuel prices faced challenges in parliament by both opposition and coalition members.

Defense

The PPP promised to rid Pakistan of violence, bigotry and terror and to ensure a strong defense. But under its watch, persecution of minorities has gone up. In the past year, Pakistan witnessed an unprecedented number of Shia killings all over the country: in Baluchistan, Karachi, Lahore, and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The debate over amending the blasphemy law unraveled, leading to numerous instances of violence against Christians who allegedly engaged in blasphemous behavior. Even Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Sherry Rehman, has been accused of blasphemy.

The PPP's other security problem is the domestic insurgency in northwestern Pakistan, with multiple attempts to negotiate with or pressure the Pakistani Taliban falling flat. In spirit, the PPP does not support persecution of minorities, nor does it have a history of being ideologically soft on militants (in comparison to other political parties). But its unwillingness and inability to challenge the nation's big security demons shows its limitations in a political environment dominated by competing interests. The military's links to sectarian groups in Punjab are well known; it has used them as proxies in its conflict with India. Civilian leaders have been hard pressed to truly challenge such groups, fearing possible backlash from the security establishment.

The PPP should be given partial credit for beginning to normalize security ties with the United States. Regardless of what side you sit on, the cloak and dagger relationship built by former presidents George W. Bush and Pervez Musharraf was politically unsustainable in both Washington and Islamabad. It was only a matter of time before other stakeholders in the relationship angled to get involved. In Pakistan, this was most visible in July 2012 when a parliamentary committee demanded that it review the state of U.S.-Pakistan relations before ending a NATO routes closure that had been triggered by a deadly cross-border NATO attack that killed more than twenty Pakistani soldiers. There was nothing legally binding about the parliamentary review, but the simple act of civilian officials debating sensitive security policy is meaningful on a symbolic level. On Afghanistan policy, the more visible role of Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and Afghan Foreign Secretary Jalil Jilani, especially in conversations with the United States, was also indicative of stronger civilian engagement, if not ownership, on security matters.

But the PPP's strengths on security, few as they were, did almost nothing to win gains against the Pakistani Taliban and its friends, who continue to target the government and its citizens. The ambitions, motivations, and power of these groups are clearly in flux and in many ways getting stronger. No amount of enhanced civilian engagement alone can alter their flight path. Furthermore, any government would have to make similar trade-offs when determining which national security policies to pursue and which ones it knows it cannot influence.

It is exactly this "trade-offs" focused approach, in both security and economic matters, that has limited PPP's implementation of its objectives that it laid out so ambitiously in 2008, meaning its chances of electoral victory are getting smaller by the day.

Shamila N. Chaudhary is a South Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council from 2010-2011.

Last Sunday afternoon, Pakistan's leading English daily newspaper, Dawn, published headline news of the arrest of a militant tied to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a domestic sectarian militant group: "Former LeJ chief involved in Daniel Pearl murder arrested in Karachi." The article trumpeted the arrest as "yet another success" of "security forces" in their "ongoing targeted operation against militants and lawbreakers in Karachi."

The story made its way around the world, landing on CNN within two days. The New York Times declared: "Suspect in Daniel Pearl killing is arrested in Pakistan."

Most certainly, the news that Pakistan's elite Rangers force arrested Pakistani militant Abdul Hayee is important. He has a long criminal record, linked to bombings, sectarian assassinations against Shia targets and domestic mayhem. U.S. President Barack Obama, the Justice Department, and the State Department should press for Hayee to be prosecuted.

But as important as Hayee's prosecution, is understanding the events that precipitated his arrest, and recognizing that amidst the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan we must put a magnifying glass to militancy in Pakistan on the street, village and individual level. The case of Abdul Hayee is illustrative of Pakistan's failure to adhere to the rule of law in any meaningful, sustainable way.

Hayee was arrested before, in 2003, and presumably released. On May 29, 2003, Dawn, the same Pakistani English daily that trumpeted Hayee's arrest last week, reported, "Terrorism convict arrested," chronicling Hayee's arrest. A few days later, The News, another English daily, reported with the headline, "Pearl kidnapping suspect appears in Pakistan" that Hayee had been charged. A detailed report by the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees chronicled Hayee's arrest and disappearance from public record.

This cat and mouse game has become business as usual, described by one U.S. official as "catch-and-release, catch-and-release." For those who have watched the case closely, who have lived with it for years, there are many vexing questions: Did Pakistani forces secretly have Hayee all along? Are they going to prosecute? If so, why now? Why not the first time they picked up him? If they do, will they actually get a conviction? Or is there something even more unsettling going on? Is this an effort to release Omar Sheikh, the mastermind of the scheme to trap Pearl, convicted to death but his case pending appeal? 

In a hyperbolic exaggeration of Hayee's role, the Pakistan Press Foundation reported that Hayee was the "mastermind" of Pearl's murder. But it seems that the news of Hayee's arrest is meant to influence as much as inform, to borrow from a concept used by intelligence analysts. Hayee wasn't directly involved in Pearl's murder, as the headlines suggest, but rather had a cameo, bit role in the kidnapping that amounted to a quick sighting of Pearl as he arrived at the compound where he was held, and then a shopping trip to a local flea market to buy the odd track suit Pearl's kidnappers made him wear. 

In "The Truth Left Behind," a report published in early 2011 by the Pearl Project, a faculty-student investigative reporting project at Georgetown University, we found that 27 men were allegedly involved in Pearl's kidnapping and murder; of them only four were convicted, while others were killed in extrajudicial shootings or held in detention, and 14 remained free. Among them: Hayee. In a detail that Pearl would have appreciated, Hayee's trail leads back to a secret meeting with militants involved in the kidnapping at a popular Karachi hangout: Snoopy Ice Cream Parlour.

In the spring of 2008, we obtained a copy of a 5-page Pakistani police report, written in Urdu, detailing Hayee's involvement in Pearl's kidnapping. The police report reveals a very detailed profile of Hayee as one of Pakistan's many "sons of darkness," as journalist Massoud Ansari calls them, born in the 1960s and 70s with roots in the northeast Punjab Province heartland, where radicalism is often fostered by an austere interpretation of Sunni Islam called Deobandism.

The men came of age in the 1980s just as Afghan fighters, fueled by their Islamic fervor and covert aid from Pakistan and the United States, were defeating the mighty Soviet military. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) tapped the new Islamist fervor in Pakistan to create militant groups such as HUM (Harkat ul-Mujahideen), LeJ (Lashkar-e-Jhangvi), JeM (Jaish-e-Mohammed), SSP (Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan), HUI (Harkat-ul-Islamiya), and LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba), based in Punjab Province, as proxies in Pakistan's war against India for the state of Kashmir. Through the 1990s, Hayee crisscrossed Pakistan into Afghanistan, training other militants, plotting attacks on members of the Shia minority and recruiting new members.

Many of the young men involved in Pearl's kidnapping had joined these groups and trained at Afghanistan-Pakistan border camps tied to Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI, and were drawn to the radical views of the Taliban fighters who subsequently took control of Afghanistan. In an ironic twist of events, it was the ISI's public affairs arm that confirmed Hayee's arrest to reporters this week. Hayee's group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, is now considered part of a loose collection of militant groups dubbed the "Punjabi Taliban."

Now in their 30s and 40s, these militants are eager foot soldiers and officers in what some regard as a growing industry, ‘Jihad Inc.', many of them living in dicey Karachi neighborhoods, such as Nazimabad and Gulshan-e-Iqbal, both neighborhoods that Hayee called home in the police report.

The details of the kidnapping chronicled in our Pearl Project report reveal these networks of trusted relationships through which militants such as Hayee operate. In January 2002, living in Karachi, Hayee got a call from Attaur Rehman, another young terrorist king pin. He and other militant buddies hailed from the same Nazimabad neighborhood that Hayee had called home. Rehman had taken over as amir of LEJ in Karachi when Hayee traveled to Afghanistan, according to the police report.

Rehman told Hayee to arrive at a compound where an "American journalist" was to be held. The journalist: Pearl. He had arrived in Karachi to conduct an interview. But it was actually a trap set by the mastermind of the kidnapping, Omar Sheikh, a Pakistani-British London School of Economics dropout who had been bitten by the jihad bug, prompting him to join Harkat ul-Mujahideen in the early 1990s, heading to India where he was arrested in 1994 for kidnapping tourists, including an American. (In 1999, India freed him in exchange for passengers on hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814.)

Rehman and Hayee were old acquaintances; they had collaborated on a 1998 attack against Iranian engineers, according to the police report. After checking out the compound, Rehman told Hayee to meet him after the sunset prayer called maghrib at Snoopy Ice Cream. The two militants ate ice cream as they waited for their co-conspirators to arrive. "A red car arrived, most probably an Alto, in which there were two people and the other was the driver who was recognizable but don't know the name," Hayee said in the police report. "He had a long beard, they got ice cream and left. We also left after them." Police suspect that Pearl was also in the red car that showed up outside the Snoopy Ice Cream parlor.

From another suspect's police report, the Pearl Project established that soon after arriving at the compound, Rehman told his underlings, "The guest is coming. Get ready." Rehman took two Russian-made TT-30 semiautomatic pistols from a side compartment of his Hero Honda C-70 motorcycle, giving one to a guard and keeping the other. He turned to one of the men, Fazal Karim, a low-level militant with five daughters, and told him to watch the gate and open it as soon as a car arrived.

"Soon after that, the journalist's car came in," Hayee is reported to have said in his police report.

When the red Suzuki Alto pulled up, Pearl was in the front seat. Karim opened the gate. Rehman opened the front door and led Pearl out of the car, holding him, according to the police report, "by his neck and in the other hand held the pistol." Hayee stood nearby.

Hayee said the militants "took the journalist at gunpoint to the room where everyone undressed him and searched his belongings completely." The red Suzuki "left right away." Rehman "picked up Daniel Pearl's belongings," Hayee said. According to other suspect reports, Rehman told Pearl to take off his clothes and hand over his belongings, including his camera, tape recorder, mobile phone, wristwatch, glasses, glasses case, wallet, four to five mobile phone cards, shoes, and a Citibank credit card. Pearl complied. Rehman asked Pearl what he wanted to eat. The guards suggested a hamburger, according to another suspect report.

Together, Hayee and Rehman went to a neighborhood called Sohrab Goth. From the flea market there, they "got clothes, beddings, food to eat," the police report said. Then he said: "I left for home."

And that appears to have been the extent of Hayee's involvement. It might be in Hayee's interest to minimize his role in the kidnapping, but his chronology is collaborated by the police reports of other suspects.

Later, Attaur Rehman and Faisal Bhatti, another alleged militant also involved, came to Hayee's house, he said, and told him: "We have completed Daniel Pearl's job."

Hayee's story demonstrates how militants make a career out of terrorism. During his interrogation, Hayee told police he had been considering a few other terrorist attacks. With regard to one of these, he said he met with a colleague, "Asif," at a mosque called Baitul Mukarram in Karachi "to make plans against Americans." Hayee and Asif knew that containers destined for American troops in Afghanistan would be passing through Pakistan. The plan: "Snatch the containers near Afghanistan, fill them with explosives, send a suicide bomber inside, and let him explode at the designated spot."

Police also tied Hayee to bombs sent to police officers in Karachi in 2003.

As the Pearl Project showed, this single arrest of Abdul Hayee won't be enough. Pakistan needs to prosecute all of the 14 men allegedly involved in Pearl's kidnapping, and it needs to shut down, dismantle and destroy the "jihad factories," as one regional security expert calls them, that created them and support them today. In a prescient article published in the last days of December 2001, after reporting in the city of Bahawalpur in south Punjab, home to many militant groups, Danny Pearl himself cast a jaundiced eye at the announcement of the arrest of 50 "extremists or terrorists," noting that despite Pakistani government claims that the offices of extremists had been shut down, "posters praising holy war still hung inside."

In an email, Pearl told his mother about the article he'd just written on the militancy in Pakistan, still alive, and, knowing any mother's normal worries for her child, cautioned her: "Don't freak out too much about my story in today's paper."

Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the co-director of the Pearl Project. Kira Zalan is an associate editor at U.S. News & World Report and former Pearl Project fellow. Barbara Feinman Todd is Georgetown University's journalism director and the co-director of the Pearl Project.

The Pearl Project was funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Pakistani police reports were translated from Urdu to English by Sajida Nomani and Dr. Zafar Nomani, translators for the Pearl Project.